The Board met on Thursday, the 21st with sixteen attendees. Officers for 2016 were elected. Floyd Theissen, chairperson, Judy Ward, vice-chair, Hugh Barton, Secretary/Treasurer. Meetings for 2016 will be April 13, July 20, October 5, and Jan. 18, 2017. Our meeting are held at the museum and start at 2 pm.

Other business was the reports of the fundraiser in October and the membership drive that is occurring thru March. The financial report was reviewed and thanks to the two funding activities and our donation jars at the museum, we are in good financial condition. Again we thank everyone for your support of our activities.

We are presently hosting the Lipscomb County Student Art Exhibit. We hope any student who wishes to display his art will ask their teachers to bring their art or bring it directly to the museum. Home schoolers are encouraged to bring their art for display.

HISTORICAL MUSINGS

On occasion, we have visitors whose last name is Lipscomb and they ask us about the origin of our county name. We have a file that tells them the history and biography of Abner Smith Lipscomb. Our county was named after him twenty years after his death. He was an Associate Justice of the Texas Supreme Court. He came to Texas for the first time in 1811. He and his two companions receive a passport from the governor of Georgia that stated "to travel the Creek Nation of Indians". He moved to Texas in 1839 and settled in Washington county. He was named Secretary of State of the Republic of Texas in 1840. Mirabeau B. Lamar was President of the Republic. During the first year of the administration, Texas became the first "country in the world" to ensure that a person's home and means of livelihood could not be taken away for debt. This property exemption law was embodied in Homestead Act passed by Congress on Jan. 26, 1839. He was appointed An Associate Justice of Texas Supreme Court by Governor James Henderson in 1845. He served in that office until his sudden death at the age of 67 in Austin on Dec. 8, 1856. His death was attributed to a combination of typhoid fever and pneumonia. burial was in the State Cemetery in Austin.

We take a photo of the Lipscomb visitors and post their visitor in our multiplex.